High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill: Select Committee

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

That will be a matter for the House authorities, but I am sure that it would be acceptable to pay the £20 in cash. I know that one of the amendments refers to electronic payments and tabling, which we will resist. The money will ultimately go to the taxpayer, as the House is a taxpayer-funded authority. We do not believe that a fee of £20 would be prohibitive for any organisation or individual seeking to petition the Committee.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Can the Minister explain why there is a £20 fee? HS2 Ltd, which is spending hundreds of millions of pounds on consultants, does not have to make any contribution to the cost of running the House, so why should individuals? Certainly, for some of the individuals in my constituency who will see their homes demolished, £20 is a rather large part of their weekly income.

[Mr Goodwill]

HS2 itself has spent considerable taxpayer funds on trying to mitigate many of the environmental implications of the line, which might well head off petitioners. Indeed, I was speaking with representatives of the Ramblers Association only the other week, when we went on a 10-mile ramble in my constituency. They told me that they were hopeful that, because of the engagement with HS2, they might not have to petition, as their concerns had been answered. HS2 has been engaging with a number of potential petitioners, including local authorities, to try to allay some of their concerns and fears without the need to petition. That money has been well spent in addressing those issues.

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[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. Indeed, there is already passive provision in the first phase to allow the Heathrow spur to be constructed, should it be decided to go forward in that way. From an engineering perspective, it would be very expensive and disruptive to try to join that link. Similarly, in relation to the passive provision for the HS1 link, it is ultimately for the Committee to decide whether or not a petition should be heard. The Committee may choose to hear petitions relating to a future link not being precluded, but the work of the Committee is about the railway before it and it cannot get bogged down considering the merits of links that may or may not happen.

[Frank Dobson]

Much as I welcome the dropping of the preposterous HS2-HS1 link, as do all the people whose lives would have been ruined by it, in view of the fact that until about three weeks ago HS2 was saying that there was no possibility of dropping the link, no one in the area believes a word that HS2 says. I warn the Minister of that. The motion says that the Committee shall not hear a petition if it relates to the link. That is fine, because the link has been dropped. Supposing that, after the Committee stage had concluded, the House as a whole decided to reinstate the link; would people then be allowed to petition? If not, they would think they were being swindled by officialdom, as would indeed be the case.

[Mr Goodwill]

I hope that, following the decision to scrap the link, I have a few more friends in Camden than before. If the Committee were to decide to make changes to the Bill that affected potential petitioners who were not affected before, there would be another opportunity for them to petition, and a similar period would be allowed for that to happen.

Let me underline that for a whole variety of reasons that I will not go into but the right hon. Gentleman will understand, we do not believe that the HS1-HS2 link represents value for money or that it is practical. There are all sorts of logistical problems. From a security perspective, the journey would have to be designated as international because we could not have a situation where some people on the train had gone through passport control and some had not. There might be rather frugally minded Yorkshiremen such as me who decided that, rather than buy a through-train ticket to Paris, they would buy two tickets and make the short stroll between Euston and St Pancras, or get the underground, or even use some other means such as a travelator, which could transport people quickly and easily between those two locations.

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[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful for that intervention. I am using this debate as a vehicle to raise these questions. They might not all be directed at the Front Bench, but I am raising them in this forum because I see no other opportunity for Members to raise them. I take on board what the Minister has said.

[Frank Dobson]

Does the right hon. Lady recognise that some of the organisations that are said to have advised the Department or HS2 are not necessarily on quite the same lines as the Department or HS2? For instance, we were told that the Institution of Civil Engineers had provided advice on the HS1-HS2 link. It had indeed, but it turns out that it advised against the link. That bit was not mentioned.

[Mrs Gillan]

One has to be very careful in this game and read the fine print. Even when one reads the fine print, one can be surprised about what one discovers.

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[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate as the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras. I think some people think that the St Pancras part of the constituency name refers to the station, but it refers to the parish of St Pancras, which has two St Pancras churches. We also have three major main line stations: St Pancras, King’s Cross and Euston. The history of what has been proposed for those stations over the years has to be borne in mind by anyone considering the current proposals. Ministers need to understand the background.

I have never questioned the integrity of the Ministers and I tell people that I do not question their integrity, but everyone questions the integrity of the officials that they have had to deal with over the years. The background is that the first proposal for a channel tunnel link to London was for it to terminate at a concrete box under King’s Cross station. We were told that there was no possible alternative to it; that it was “perfection”. Eventually, that daft idea was abandoned. An idea was then taken up—I was the first person to put it forward—for St Pancras station to be used as the channel tunnel link terminus. When I first suggested it, sneering remarks from all sorts of railway aficionados were the result. In the end, it went ahead and it has worked very well, as I think everyone accepts. Although it involved problems for local people, they went along with it because they could see the merits of it, both from their point of view and from everyone else’s.

Similarly, the recent improvements at King’s Cross were welcomed by virtually everyone, including the council, me and local organisations. That is not the case with Euston. We still need clarification to satisfy people in my constituency. When the proposal for the channel tunnel link was first put forward, I said to officials that it would need a great deal of engineering work to make it work and that that would be very troublesome for the people adjacent to the part of the line above ground. They said, “No, no, it won’t need major engineering works.” When I said that at a public meeting, one of the consultants—not an official—came along and said, “Oh no, no; we can assure everyone it won’t need major works.” Lo and behold, it was eventually accepted that major engineering works would be needed, because some new factors had arisen, including the need to widen the route. Somebody who thinks they can put a line across Camden town for an additional service without widening the route ought not to be allowed to advise the Government or anyone else.

Time and again, people said the proposition was ridiculous and they were sneered at and snarled at, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), who speaks from the Front Bench, would confirm. I very much welcome the position taken by her and our hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), as do people in my constituency, that we do not accept that the link is a good idea. It is a bad idea and it should, without a shadow of a doubt, be wiped out altogether. That is why I could not possibly support amendment (e), in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), which would raise the possibility of the damn thing being revivified. I could not bear the thought of that.

The other point I would like to make, before I come to all the amendments, is that the procedure that we are talking about is archaic, difficult for human beings to cope with and ridiculous. We might compare it with a public inquiry into a similarly large proposition, where people have the opportunity to make representations without having to engage with an A4 page of all sorts of archaic rubbish and ridiculous language before actually getting round to putting their point, and without time limitations on submitting their petitions, which are then vetted to see whether they are valid. For what might be described as normal human beings—or, for that matter, small businesses, which do not have a great secretariat or legal advisers and suchlike—the time limits proposed are already too short and ought to be extended. In relation to businesses, I have a query for the Minister that I hope he can clear up. As I understand it, the restaurants in Drummond street will, because they are businesses, have the short deadline for submitting their petitions. Is that right?

[Mr Goodwill]

The small businesses along the route—shops or, indeed, farms—can petition either as businesses, in which case they will have the short deadline, or as individuals, in which case the longer deadline will apply. I hope that clarifies matters.

[Frank Dobson]

The next question is this: does the business restriction apply to the association of businesses in Drummond street? The Minister might not know the answer to that—I would not necessarily expect him to know that.

[Mr Goodwill]

I stand to be corrected by wiser authorities than me, but an association would be in the same category as businesses, some of the non-governmental organisations and larger local authorities. However, members of an association could collectively petition as individuals and then delegate one of their representatives or parliamentary counsel to speak on their behalf.

[Frank Dobson]

I am grateful for that clarification, but I am sorry about the direction of it.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that some very small businesses would have greatly benefited from being treated as individuals? Why someone running a very small business, going about their normal, day-to-day activity, should be considered a greater expert in the petitioning process than an individual is quite beyond me.

[Frank Dobson]

I entirely share the hon. Gentleman’s views about that. I am glad that Camden council is organising workshops for individuals and small businesses and making its best efforts to ensure that their petitions are in order and, in some cases, that the £20 is handed over and logged, and then passed to me, so that I can personally hand it in, in the hope that their petitions will be valid.

That leads me on to the £20 fee. It is said, generally speaking, that it is not a deterrent. Well, if it is not a deterrent, why do we have it? People do not have to pay a £20 fee to give evidence at a public inquiry. The fee will raise quite a trivial sum. Even if thousands of people submit petitions, at £20 each, the fee will not raise any worthwhile amount of money for the House of Commons. If the fee is not a deterrent, why do we have it? I think it will be a deterrent for the worst-off. As the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) said, it is a fifth of a single pensioner’s pension, which is a lot of money for a pensioner—or some pensioners, anyway—to find. Whatever the outcome in this case, the whole hybrid Bill approach needs to be looked at. We talk about modernising, and by God there is some modernising needed for this hybrid procedure.

That takes me back to the instruction that the Committee

“shall not hear any Petition to the extent that it relates to whether or not there should be a spur from Old Oak Common to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.”

No one trusts the processes involved, so there is something that is still not clear to me. I am sure the Minister is trying to get the truth out, but to return to the proposition that I was trying to explain earlier, let us suppose that the Committee complies with that instruction—as it must—and cannot reintroduce the proposal for a spur from HS2 to HS1, but the matter returns to the House after the Committee has looked at it and made all its recommendations. As I understand it, the House could then reinstate the link, if it wanted to. If it did, would there be any procedure to enable petitions from those affected? If not, in effect we are banning people’s petitions from being examined now, while they might not be able to petition later if there were a further proposition.

[Mr Goodwill]

To clarify, if any changes that result from the Committee responding to petitions affect people who were not affected previously, a new petitioning period would be triggered. People who were then affected could petition, so they should not be frightened that something could be slid under the door without their having the opportunity to petition.

[Frank Dobson]

I understand that; my question is this. Let us suppose the matter comes back to the House and the House as a whole wishes to change things in some way that affects people. Will those affected then have the opportunity to petition against those changes?

[Mr Goodwill]

I will correct this if it is not right, but my understanding is that if that happened—there are no plans anywhere at all to do that; I must make it clear that we have scrapped the link—that would initiate the whole process again. It would be a new process and a new Bill, and there would be a new hybrid Bill Committee, but that is not the situation. I therefore hope that the right hon. Gentleman can allay the fears of his constituents, in that we have indeed abandoned the HS2-HS1 link as part of this project and the petitioning process could not resurrect it, because it is not within the scope of the Bill before us.

[Frank Dobson]

I thank the Minister for that; I am 99% reassured.

As the Minister knows, the Bill’s proposals for Euston have been abandoned—or are to be abandoned—and are to be replaced. The engineering and other studies have only just commenced. My next question to the Minister is whether he can confirm that when the new proposals for Euston are formulated, they will be subject to the usual procedures requiring HS2 to produce a new environmental statement, that there will be opportunities for people to respond to it and that people will then be able to submit new petitions against the new proposals that the Government wish to include in the Bill. Am I right about that?

[Mr Goodwill]

I shall comment on that when I sum up at the end, so that I do not misinform the right hon. Gentleman. I rather suspect, however, that I will be able to reassure him that that is the case.

[Frank Dobson]

I welcome that reassurance.

I am particularly concerned, too, about the statutory and non-statutory provisions for compensation. Outside London, some people whose homes will not be demolished but whose property and general lifestyle will be adversely affected by a railway perhaps 50 yards away will be compensated, which I think is right. The situation in my constituency, however, is that people whose homes are 5 yards away from the line or 5 yards away from 10 years of engineering works will get no compensation. I hope that the Minister, the Department and HS2 Ltd are aware that the immediately preceding Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer, has given us an opinion that the procedure followed in respect of my constituency is actually in breach of the law. I therefore hope that at least the House will have an opportunity to review it, even if the Committee cannot. I view it as strange that we are talking about a Committee supposedly looking at mitigation and compensation that is apparently not allowed to look at compensation. That needs to be revised.

My last but one point is that I very much support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. I hope that the Government, as well as our Front-Bench team, will go along at least with the spirit of it.

My final point is about the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston. I believe that if we are to have a High Speed 2, it is ludicrous for it not to be connected to High Speed 1. That does not mean that it makes any sense whatever to have the HS2-HS1 link that was originally proposed, which was crackers in practically every aspect and certainly does not go to the right place. I agree with those who believe that there needs to be a connection—and the best place to receive that connection, if that is the right word for it, is Stratford.

[Lyn Brown]

Hear, hear.

[Frank Dobson]

I hear my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown). It has just occurred to me that if HS2 did that and it went to Stratford, the most famous Englishman of all time might have ended up in a different Stratford from the one in which he was born and brought up. I think that would be a welcome move. I would ask anyone who thinks that we are going to see successful use of a travelator between Euston and St Pancras quite where this “covered way” is to be constructed. The proposal has been suggested about 25 times in the past and it has always been rejected as absolutely loopy.

Going back to the original proposition for the channel tunnel to come into King’s Cross, I remember moving an amendment to the effect that provision should be made to go from King’s Cross to the west midlands, but it was duly voted down. I have always been in favour of having proper connections. When the preposterous idea of placing a travelator along Euston road was proposed, it was received with mockery and derision then and it is still being received with mockery and derision now. The only way to avoid using Euston road would be to demolish even more houses in my constituency or to drill a hole through the British Library or through the Francis Crick Institute that is currently being constructed. I find it most extraordinary that some people think that a satisfactory link can be constructed.

I have noticed that the great hero of the hour is Sir David Higgins, so we are told that because he suggested the proposal, it must be a good idea. He suggested that the delay would be no more than that we experience when we have to go from one terminal building at Heathrow to another one. They are not quite the same. Not much rain falls on people when they travel from terminal 4 to terminal 1 at Heathrow, but Euston road really can get pretty wet. I thus very much support the spirit of the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston, but I could not bear to support it in full because it still includes the possibility of facilitating

“the provision at a later date of the spur”,

which has rightly been abandoned.

On all these issues, I urge the new Minister to bear in mind that every time local people—and me in trying to represent them—criticised the link and every time we criticised the design for Euston, we were treated, frankly, with contempt. Now the contemptibles have turned out to be right, yet the people who treated us with contempt are being asked to come up with alternatives to meet the requirements that everyone thinks are needed. The Minister needs to keep an eye on them: if they are the same people, the chances of them getting it right now are no better than the chances of them getting it right before.

My final point is this. The original proposal for Euston was to cost £1.2 billion. Eight months later, before anybody had done a trial bore or anything, the project came up with a revised costing of £2 billion. That is why the Minister needs to be very careful in entrusting the future of this project to people who can get a costing for a station £0.8 billion wrong and have to correct themselves within eight months. I offer friendly advice to a fellow Yorkshireman: “Have a good look at ’em, mate; have a good look at ’em.”

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[Sir John Randall]

I am grateful for that intervention from another venerable greybeard. Something of a theme seems to be emerging. Yes, it is true that those Members were missing in action, but I am afraid that the figures on which we always work relate to those who actually go through the Division Lobbies.

[Frank Dobson]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my view that we can take some comfort from the thought that each of the 50 of us who voted for the amendment was voting against £1 billion?

[Sir John Randall]

Personally, I would rather vote for £1 billion each, but that would probably be inappropriate.

Let me reiterate my thanks to the members of the new Select Committee, because they will be faced with a very onerous task. I am not sure whether it will be possible for the message that I tried to convey about the Heathrow spur during the five minutes that were allotted to me yesterday to be raised before the Committee, but I think that very few people, if any, still think it worth continuing with the spur, and raising that issue would help those of us who are petitioning for an extension of the tunnel beyond Ickenham.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. Now that I have been released from the Whips Office, the House is perhaps beginning to recognise that one of my great interests is wildlife and conservation, and everything to do with the environment, and I hope we will do all that we can to ensure that the Committee considers the question of mitigation in that context. I mentioned corn buntings yesterday, but if I had had more time I could have mentioned a great many more species, and enlightened the House a great deal more about wildlife in the Chilterns.

This will be a long process, and there will be decisions for us to make. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham has raised some interesting points, and we have discussed them. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister has listened to what has been said, and will pass it on. I hope that the Committee will do its work so well that by the time we reach Third Reading, I shall find myself able to agree with the Bill, which would be far preferable to the position in which I find myself today.

I must say that I feel sorry for the members of the Committee. I have never had the good fortune, or possibly misfortune, to be a councillor, but I understand that members of planning committees never win friends, because whatever decision they make, they are bound to please one lot and annoy another. I am afraid that the Committee will be rather like a referee at a football match, or in any other sport: whatever decision it makes, someone will be upset by it. I therefore feel that we, as fellow Members of Parliament, should give it the fullest possible support.

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[Joan Walley]

Once again the right hon. Lady is absolutely right and I value the work she does on the Environmental Audit Committee. When the Government have the report of the Select Committee that has been appointed today, they will bring forward environmental proposals on Third Reading. There is ample time for the Government to take account of how we can have something in place that makes up for the lack of strategic environmental assessment—we have not had that—and which could still look at the detail of the environmental impact assessments that we need. In the evidence that we received from many NGOs—from the wildlife trusts, the WWF and a host of other organisations—they all said how much they wanted to work in collaboration to find ways of having the mitigation that is needed, and also to look at implementing offsetting in ways that could be truly transformational. There are all kinds of implications for the detail of the engineering works on the route as well. If there is no way for all that to be brought together and taken on board, I think Parliament will be accused of having total disregard for the environmental aspects that should have been included and still need to be.

Finally, I want to refer to the Supreme Court. It made it clear that it is for Parliament, not the Government, to decide the parliamentary procedure for the hybrid Bill, and therefore for Parliament to decide what is reasonable and practicable when it comes to environmental protection, mitigation and compensation measures. It is entirely appropriate that the Select Committee should have the instruction to ensure that it is able properly to consider environmental issues and not leave what is “reasonable and practicable” to HS2 to decide, which in my book would be likely to mean a much lower level of environmental protection being applied than is required.

The cost of such environmental protections is a necessary cost if such a scheme is to go ahead. We heard about the huge ambition of HS2. That ambition needs to be equalled by environmental ambition. We should be doing everything to avoid impacts first, before we mitigate or compensate for them.

[Frank Dobson]

People sometimes think that the environmental factors apply just to rural areas, but the environmental impact in my constituency will be dramatic; I am thinking of the effect on air pollution, noise, general filth of one sort or another, and disruption. I very much agree with the line my hon. Friend was taking in her last few words, because, for example, not only will people have to live next to the main site of the Euston development, but no fewer than 14 subsidiary depots are proposed, all of which will be damaging the environment.

[Joan Walley]

I am most grateful for that intervention, as my right hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. The environmental aspects are not just about nature, biodiversity, natural capital or ecosystems; they are also about noise and air quality. This week we are already seeing the huge concerns that exist about air quality; in yesterday’s debate we heard the extent to which many Members are worried about the long-standing impact on it. How that is mitigated needs to be factored into the specifications of the work that is done, and the Select Committee appointed by this House will have an important role to play in that.

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[Frank Dobson]

My hon. Friend rightly referred to the fact that Crossrail is usually cited as an example of how things should be done, and I agree with that view. Crossrail runs across my constituency and its Tottenham Court Road station is in it. The original proposal was that the nearest depot to facilitate the building of Crossrail should take over the Phoenix garden behind St Giles’s church for about a decade, but I was able to persuade Crossrail that it would be better to knock down a couple of buildings in Oxford street instead. That is in marked contrast to the approach of HS2 Ltd, which proposes to take over and occupy for a decade every open space and play area within about 100 yards of Euston station.

[Joan Walley]

That is a point well made, and unless the current arrangements are changed HS2 Ltd will be able to give judgment on its own plans. It will be given carte blanche to do exactly what it wants if there are no means of scrutinising its proposals. I would hate to see all the areas of land that people value and want to see as part of their communities coerced into becoming depots or some such thing. Yesterday, on Second Reading, hon. Members raised transport issues and asked why the tunnelling spoil could not be transported away other than by road. All these aspects need to be looked at from the environmental perspective, not just on the basis of the bottom line of what the cost and engineering will mean. That is the equivalent of giving HS2 Ltd carte blanche to set out its own policy.

For all those reasons, I shall be interested to hear the response to the concerns that we have expressed in the amendment about these environmental issues. Constituents and the country at large expect this Parliament to provide the highest level of scrutiny of this massive, £50 billion investment programme, and we need to be seen to be doing that. For that to happen, we require the instructions to the Select Committee to be unambiguous about its environmental responsibilities and those matters for which it has a responsibility to report back to the House.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I do not wish to detain the House for long. I was interested to hear the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) say that it is strange that this House has not modernised its procedures for hybrid Bills. I have never considered myself an arch-moderniser, but I could not agree with him more. The whole process of dealing with major infrastructure projects in this country—including both the parliamentary processes in this House and the processes outside it—is outdated, antiquated and unacceptable in this day and age. The fact that it took 10 years to build terminal 5 at Heathrow and so much time to build some of the other major projects that this country has enjoyed in the past 20 years is ludicrous and we should deal with that.

I declare an interest, because I had the dubious honour of being a member of the second-longest running hybrid Bill Committee, which, again, had an association with the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras, as the Government of the day had the idea that the London terminal for High Speed 1 was going to be at King's Cross. Man and boy, I went through that process and I was fascinated to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) say that the members of these Committees are not pressed men. Things have changed, I suspect, in the processes of the House. The Committee had a fantastic cast. There were only four of us: Bob Clay, the former Member for one of the Sunderland seats; someone who has now reinvented himself in this House as the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway); Mr Neil Hamilton; and myself. I knew what they had done wrong, but I was not sure what I had done.

[Frank Dobson]

You were Mr Ordinary.

[Mr Burns]

I suspect that I was actually a sucker, because I had been a Member of this House for only 18 months and I believed what the Whips said when they invited me on to the Committee.

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[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment (e) to motion 4 on the Order Paper, which is tabled in my name and that of five other right hon. and hon. Members from the west midlands representing the three main political parties. It is quite useful to have learned that to be on the Committee that will consider the Bill requires not only persistence, but also continence—in every sense of the word.

In speaking to the amendment, I am trying to prove a theory, namely that the greater and more significant the issue under debate, the fewer words will be used to discuss it. Debates about £20 fees and the Committee’s quorum may take up more inches in Hansard than this amendment. The amendment is quite simple and tries to suggest that when planning massive investment that will last for decades, it is foolish to constrain the project unnecessarily. Some 12 years ago, I was in Birmingham to discuss the revamping of New Street station and a question was asked about high-speed rail. Everybody around the table said, “You’re never going to get high-speed rail so you might as well forget about it.” We decided, however, that we ought to keep the corridor, so that high-speed rail could happen should it ever be cleared. The amendment asks that although the Committee will not be permitted to hear any petition to the extent that it relates to the

“the spur from Old Oak Common to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link referred to in the Bill”,

it should not be

“prevented by this instruction from hearing any Petition”—

and this is important—

“relating to the need for the Bill to:

(a) include an alternative to the spur;

(b) facilitate the provision at a later date of the spur; or

(c) facilitate the provision at a later date of an alternative to the spur”.

I was not born in this country. I was born in a city called Munich, which, when it was awarded the Olympic games, was synonymous with traffic jams. London transport engineers moved to Munich and managed to design an integrated transport system that is still serving its purpose 50 years later. The main thing was that Munich had planning laws that allowed for big decisions to be made. We should not have a high-speed rail line that has speed and ease of access, both national and international, as its whole purpose and that then asks passengers to get out of one train halfway through the journey, move across London and then go somewhere else. That may be how it is done in Paris, but it is still not a good idea. I want Ministers to consider the matter, because it is not just the Mayor of London who thinks that it is a bad idea. Birmingham city council’s view is that it is important not only for the region, but also for its provisions and planning for Curzon Street station and the international link.

Accepting the amendment or elaborating on what the Minister means by passive provisions would not close the door on something that it is so essential to the success of high-speed rail. I urge the Minister to ask himself why we are spending massive amounts of money so far into the future. We want to increase not only capacity, but also interconnectivity, both within the United Kingdom and with the rest of Europe. The Minister should consider the amendment with great care. If he can come back with some proposal that proves that the door has not been closed on what is an enormously important debate, I will be happy not to press the amendment to a Division, but he must be quite specific about what he means by passive provisions and how the link will be considered. That does not mean a specific link; it means linking HS1 and HS2 in a meaningful manner. If we do not do that, the whole purpose will be defeated.

[Frank Dobson]

As I hope I have already explained to my hon. Friend, I would happily accept paragraphs (a) and (c) in the amendment, but were the proposal to

“facilitate the provision at a later date of the spur”

accepted, we would create a situation in which people would be able to petition in favour of the abandoned spur, but the people affected by it would not be able to petition against it.

[Ms Stuart]

I fully accept that that is an argument. The main thing, however, is that I do not want the decision not to consider a link simply to be in the hands of the Secretary of State and Sir David Higgins; I want the decision to be made in a democratic way. I therefore want the doors to be kept open for the Committee to consider petitions to provide such a link. That is really the only point that I wanted to make today.

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[Mrs Spelman]

I agree, and I hope that when the Minister responds to the debate he will mention the impact of construction works.

[Frank Dobson]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that one of HS2 Ltd’s favourite words is “temporary”? It only meets the ultimate dictionary definition of “not permanent.” The temporary use of a depot next to a school, for example, would last longer than the average time a child is at the school. If it is next to a quiet, little garden where old people like to sit, most of them will not be alive at the end of the temporary period.

[Mrs Spelman]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. In fact, the blight applies from the moment people are made aware that construction sites will be located next to their properties. Since March 2010, people have been waiting for over four years and are unable to sell, so we know that construction works have exactly the same impact on the need to get on with their lives.

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[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman); I agree with much of what she says. I hope that she has more purchase with her own Front Benchers than I might, and that they have listened very carefully to her speech and to those of others who have talked about the HS1-HS2 link. I rise in support of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart).

I want to reflect on the link between the existing route for High Speed 1 from St Pancras to the channel tunnel and the proposed High Speed 2 link. I am a supporter of HS2, but the proposed link, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) rightly stated, would not have provided an adequate service. I was therefore happy to support its deletion from the Bill yesterday. It was to be a single track shared between international, freight and domestic passenger services, with limited potential to maximise the growth and regeneration benefits that high-speed rail could bring to the UK. It was not adequate to address anticipated demand. It would have allowed for just a small number of international services and created a conflict between those, freight and London orbital services, with limited potential for further inter-regional and intra-regional ones.

Recognising the shortcomings of that link route and removing it and its safeguarding from the Bill does not, of course, remove the strong arguments in favour of a good-quality link between the UK’s two high-speed lines and between the UK and the European high-speed rail network. Indeed, as I said yesterday, Richard Threlfall, head of infrastructure at KPMG, is quoted in the engineering press as saying that it is a “great tragedy” to scrap the link and “complete nonsense” not to have the two lines connected. I absolutely concur with his judgment. Clearly, at some time in the future we are going to need a much-enhanced capacity such as a dedicated twin-track line capable of working as a dual-purpose line for international and domestic services. We therefore need to look at the physical alternatives to the proposed and now rejected link, including the possibility of tunnelling to provide a connection with the west coast main line and HS2. We need to start that discussion and evaluation now.

I really urge the Minister to reconsider his position, because such a link also opens up the possibility of inter-regional and intra-regional services, as well as international links. We know there is demand for direct rail services from the midlands, the north-west and Yorkshire to east London, Essex and Kent without having to go through central London.

I reiterate the tribute I paid yesterday to colleagues across the political spectrum from Kent and Essex county councils who have collaborated with my own borough of Newham to demonstrate that demand through research published in the 2013 report, “Travel market demand and the HS1-HS2 link”. It concluded that potential increases in domestic demand enabled by an HS2-HS1 link of adequate capacity would bring significant benefits and, therefore, strengthen the business case for HS2 overall. Consultants commissioned by Greengauge 21 research highlighted an historic lack of long-distance, cross-London connectivity, only some of which will be addressed by the additions from Thameslink and Crossrail. The net effect is that many journeys end up being made by car, making use of the busy M25 simply to avoid the difficulty of cross-London transfers. I have to admit that I am guilty of making such journeys.

The report discerned in particular seven inter-regional domestic service markets that would benefit from a transfer to rail from other modes—especially car journeys on the M25—if there were an HS2-HS1 link. It concluded:

“The increase in rail share is between 7% and 23%, which is a remarkably high transfer”,

such that a

“new geography would get direct benefit from HS2 services: Essex, East/South East London, Kent, parts of Suffolk and East Sussex”.

Five of the seven inter-regional services include a focus on Stratford and enable connections to the west midlands and the north-west, the west of England and south Wales, the east midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, and north-west London and Milton Keynes. The report aggregates that increase in domestic inter-regional demand as equating to 45% of demand emanating from central London, or 25% of the whole demand from Greater London. Along with increases in international demand from the link, those benefits will justify investment in the HS2-HS1 link and add significantly to the core business case for HS2. It will be seen that Stratford would play a key role in such substantial service development.

It strikes me as a great pity that there has not yet been any work to give a financial value to the opportunities to run those inter-regional services, even though the demand is clearly there. The Government must surely take note of that: the interconnectivity cannot be denied and the common sense of the link is obvious. The time to act is now and I seek an assurance today from the Government that they will commission a further examination of the demand, assess the economic benefit and put that into the mix when reviewing the potential for a future link between HS1 and HS2.

Although I am conscious of and totally support the need to contain the costs of HS2, I am also conscious of the old maxim, “penny wise, pound foolish”. We must take care not to take decisions now—indeed, we should avoid them—that would create obstacles down the line to securing maximum growth in the economy, particularly in regions to the north of London and in the midlands, as well as in east London.

The current approach also fails to recognise the environmental advantages, including reducing car travel on crucial networks such as the M25 and relieving pressure on central London interchanges and termini. We know that connectivity and capacity are far and away the most important issues for travellers—more important even than speed. Stratford International has both in spades, and I make no apology for reminding the House of that fact yet again.

We are discussing investment for a high-speed railway network designed to last until the next century. We must be strategic in our approach, squeeze value from every pound of spending and not overlook the opportunity to strengthen the business case for the entire network. Dragging our suitcases along streets in London, however desirable those streets may be, is not a 21st-century solution to the issue of connectivity.

[Frank Dobson]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the proposed walk is along Euston road, which has the worst air pollution in London, and for which the Government are being prosecuted under European air quality legislation?

[Lyn Brown]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for supporting my case in his speech and in that intervention. Frankly, the Stratford option would help us enormously with the difficulties in his own area, which he has raised.

Above all, we need to consider how we can, in the not-too-distant future, secure an improved, fully integrated, robust link between HS1 and HS2. The link should be available for international and domestic services routed through Stratford at the heart of the growing east London economy, and benefiting economies in the midlands, in the north and indeed across the whole country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I am sure that were the Committee to make a request for either this type of report or commercially confidential material it will be considered at that time, but at this stage the Committee has not been formed and no such request has been made.

The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), as we heard from his contribution, is a man ahead of his time. His predictions have come to pass—at least the ones that he referred to; he may have made other predictions that have not. I would be keen to have dinner with him at one of the restaurants at Euston and see the problem first hand. Maybe I should go incognito; I suspect he is so well known he could not go incognito. As a fellow Yorkshireman, I suspect that there may be a problem at the end of the meal when we have to decide who is going to pay.

[Frank Dobson]

I am very happy to take up that invitation. As a fellow Yorkshireman, I suggest we go at lunchtime when there is a brilliant buffet that costs a lot less than eating in the evening.

[Mr Goodwill]

How could I refuse such an invitation?

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether we could confirm that any new Euston proposals would require a new environmental statement, consultation and petitioning period. The answer is yes. A consultation would be required by Standing Order 224A. The change would then be subject to a new petitioning period.

The right hon. Gentleman also talked about petitioning by business associations. I think I can go further than I did in my intervention. A business is defined in the terms of this measure as an organisation that exists to make money for its owners. A business association would not seem to meet this definition and so would have the longer deadline. I suspect that if he found a different lawyer he would probably get a different result, but that is the position of this Government at this Dispatch Box and I hope those associations will be reassured by that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) talked about the green belt. The Bill includes powers for local authorities to approve plans and specifications for the railway, which should ensure that any structures in the green belt are designed sympathetically.

This debate has been an important stage in the progress of this Bill for phase 1. I hope I have explained why many of the amendments are superfluous to the effective operation of the Committee.